Hello folks. This is a 2011 article from my former gardening column in the Toowoomba Chronicle. I hope it helps give meaning to your observance of today's Anzac Day centenary.

It's been more than 150 years since Easter Monday last coincided with Anzac Day, a date well before the landing at Gallipoli and one that won't be repeated until 2095. For the keenest of the keen, such a rare event equates to five days in a row of gardening bliss. I'm pretty keen myself. I plan to do a bit of work outside, but I'll also be making time to relax, and reflect on what the weekend might mean beyond chocolate bunnies and slouch hats.

Easter and Anzac Day share a common message as far as I'm concerned. It's a message not of war and glory, but one of sacrifice and ultimately, enduring peace. The Old Testament prophet Micah foresaw this peace in pointedly non-violent, agrarian terms:

“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

These words ring true for a fruit grower (and peace-lover) like me. I'm a bit taken by the idea of sitting under my abundant fig tree and pruning it with a tool furnished from a defunct weapon of war. It's certainly not the reality at the moment. I've got one old, poorly positioned fig in the garden, and the world's most cursed marsupial – the possum – usually beats me to the fruit. I'm planting more figs this winter, and hope for a day when I can eat from a number of trees and live not just in peace with my fellow human beings, but the local wildlife as well.

The common fig, Ficus carica, is probably the oldest of all the domesticated fruit trees. It is one of a number of contenders for the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, and was first described in stone tablets by the Egyptians more than 2700 years ago, when it was revered as the Tree of Life. The tree and it's fruit are afforded frequent mentions in the Bible, but the most famous is, of course, Adam and Eve's use of the leaves as “modesty patches” to hide their nakedness.

The fact that the leaves were able to hide the dangly bits of the first man should give some indication of their ornamental value. The leaves are big and handsome. The tree itself can look scrappy, but a well pruned example can make for a very attractive specimen that meets my ideal characteristics for a plant – beautiful and productive.

The fruit is even more luscious than the foliage. If you've never eaten a fat, fleshy fig straight off the tree then I don't reckon you've quite lived. Don't even give the occasional supermarket fruit a second glance. Figs have such a short shelf life that they demand to be eaten fresh, cooked or dried. Freshly picked figs, halved and baked with honey, then served with a dollop of double cream is nothing short of a taste of heaven.

Figs will grow in any climate the Downs has to offer, from warm to cool temperate, to subtropical, and while the tree prefers reasonably rich ground to sand, isn't overly fussy. The real key to getting bumper crops is to grow figs “leaner” than you would most other fruiting trees. A well-nourished fig tree will get fat and lazy, developing an extensive root system and putting lots of energy into a lush canopy. It will do this at the expense of fruit, so in fertile soil, feeding is only necessary to get the tree established. As Louis Glowinski says in his excellent The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia, “neglect seems to be a good policy as far as fertiliser in concerned.”

The other trick people employed to stimulate fruiting, was to constrict the tree's root ball. Old timers would plant a fig in a 44-gallon drum to keep the roots compact. Others advocate pruning the roots periodically with a sharp spade. A simpler option is to either plant your tree against a sunny wall and espalier it, or grow a fig tree in a large pot. Half wine barrels are perfect, both practically and aesthetically, but don't forget to drill drainage holes in the bottom, and for longevity, treat with a wood preservative. As for varieties my picks for the Downs are 'Brown Turkey', 'Black Genoa' for colder areas and 'White Adriatic' where its warmer.

My hope is that you'll take some time this weekend to reflect on the common message of both Easter, and Anzac Day. Perhaps you'll be inspired to plant a fig tree. In years to come, maybe you too will be found sitting beneath your tree, eating its fruit, looking forward to the day when war is over and peace reins upon the earth.

I really don't get popular culture. Never have. I have a degree in psychology, so I understand some of the science behind collective behaviours, but personally, I've never felt the need to compromise my beliefs and my sense of self to blindly follow the crowd. The road less travelled has, and continues to be, my chosen path.

My garden reflects this. I happily grow whatever I feel like growing, not what's popular. Take kale. It's become such a darling with paleo life-stylers and foodie hipsters that there was a shortage of seed last year. Kale is a virtuous plant, no doubt, but it's hardly new to the world of food. For centuries it's been a staple in places like Siberia and Scotland, and it's been grown in Australia since the arrival of the First Fleet. I've grown various kale varieties for nearly a decade. Yet in the last couple of years the humblest of foods has suddenly become popular, and equally virtuous greens have fallen out of favour.

Take lettuce. It's dead easy to grow in the cooler months of the year, and is much less prone to pests than kale. Cabbage white butterflies, aphids and flea beetles don't bother it, slugs and snails have to be really desperate to eat it, and possums, the Clive Palmers of my vegie garden (they eat pretty much EVERYTHING they can get their big gobs onto), can be kept at bay with a simple throw-over net. Lettuces are a lot nicer in salad than mature kale leaves, and most varieties as just as suitable for cooking as their trendier cousins chicory and dandelions.

This isn't to say that I'm calling for lettuce to be the next big food trend. No way! On the contrary, I'm hoping it keeps flying under the hipster radar so proper gardeners can grow it without impunity. The point I want to make is this: Grow your own way. Know who you are and what you're on about, ignore the crowds, and find your own path toward bliss in the garden, and life. It's not a popularity contest.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by,and that has made all the difference."- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Next month marks nine years since we moved our family from Toowoomba to the little smallholding in the hills we call Thistlebrook. A lot has happened in that time. We've added two kids to the brood. Endured biblical floods and droughts. Seen neighbours come and go. Raised livestock and buried dead stock. We've had seasons of plenty and seasons of want.

The summer just passed was about average, produce-wise, which in real terms means that we had an abundance of some things, and a lean season for others. The blackberries were epic, for example, but the tomatoes...dismal. We've picked a reasonable amount, but blight got the plants during a December wet spell and they haven't recovered. As for the current season, autumn is shaping up to to be similar, with abundance and scarcity in roughly equal measure.

What hasn't been abundant in the last few months is money. We've been running such a tight ship since Christmas that the bolts holding the beast together have almost sheered off from the pressure. We're essentially holding on for grim death until next term, when some invoices are due for payment and, barring a catastrophe, we can ease the strain and loosen things up a bit.

No-one tells you about this aspect of smallholding life when you're stuck in the city and dreaming nightly of a move to the country. You can research books and websites in minute detail and you can pick the brains of those hardy souls who've already made the move and persevere with the dream. Personal finances are one of the last great taboos, so for the most part, nearly everyone who blogs, speaks, and spruiks about smallholding will never mention the fact that this way of life has always been financially precarious, at best, and devastatingly effective at forcing a signature on a bankruptcy form, at worst.

Here's the hard truth: Unless you have major capital reserves that enable you to purchase a viable property outright, or you can earn very decent off farm income, or you can grow high value crops that earn a decent on-farm income, or you have a thriving farm related business, it's nigh on impossible to make smallholding pay its own pay. We've tried, and failed. Almost all of our income now comes from off farm sources (for me, writing, for Kylie, piano teaching) and that's barely enough to make ends meet.

This isn't a whinge. Or a plea for help. Or a boast, if that's the way your mind interprets such personal financial disclosures. It's simply a statement of fact, and I hope, a case in point. In addition to the hard truth I just outlined, there's another: Time is money.

Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father and renowned polymath, coined this phrase. It refers to the concept of "opportunity cost", which is one of those wanky terms economists like to trot out to impress economic plebs like you and I, but it's a concept worth getting your head around. In simple terms it is the value of the next best thing you give up when you make a decision. The simplified version of Wikipedia puts it this way:

"Opportunity cost is how much leisure time we give up to work. Because leisure and income are both valued, we have to decide whether to work, or do what we want. Going to work implies more income but less leisure. Staying at home is more leisure yet less income."

In smallholding terms it might go something like "opportunity cost is how much farming/food growing/smallholding time we give up to earn an off farm income. The more work we do off-farm, the less time there is for smallholding."

The ideal situation is to use your land to produce enough food to feed your family, and produce a surplus that can be sold for good money, generating enough income to make the smallholding financially viable. I know of some really hardworking, clever people around Australia who've managed to achieve this, but for most smallholders, it's simply not going to happen.

So what's the solution? What advice would I give someone determined to make their smallholding dream a reality? I've got a few ideas.

Grow high value crops and farm full time. This is doable, but you'll need the right combination of factors to make it work. Decent land helps. A reliable, cheap water supply is a must. Really hard, physical work is a given. The right kind of crops must grow in your climate, and you'll also need access to markets that will value your produce highly and be willing to pay a premium.

Minimise, or eliminate debt. To own a piece of land outright is to ensure maximum flexibility when it comes to opportunity cost. One of our issues at Thistlebrook is that we still have a chunky (but not excessive) mortgage keeping us tied to the rack, and this eats up a large part of our monthly income. One way to minimise debt is to buy a cheap property, and in certain parts of Australia (eg TASSIE!!) this is still a possibility. As for high interest consumer debt such as credit cards and interest free deals - they're the work of Lucifer himself. Pay them down and close the account or better still, avoid them in the first place, however tempting.

Minimise expenses. The more frugal you can be, the more time you will have to farm. In fact, these two are interrelated. By growing your own food, cutting your own firewood, harvesting your own water and so on, you will reduce your expenses, freeing up more time to farm. But pay attention to the idea of opportunity cost (see below).

Try really hard to get your opportunity cost settings right, and revise them continually. A friend of mine worked for a while as a dentist. He was in such a decent paying job that he could afford to work a day or two a week, buy a house to live in and a house to rent out, and spend the other few days a week studying for a second degree and doing whatever he damn well pleased. But not all of us are qualified for high paying jobs. Some of us (me included) work in struggling industries where the rate of pay hasn't increased in a decade or more, while the cost of living has gone interstellar. get the balance between time and money right and you'l be more likely to keep the smallholding dream viable.

Persevere. My family is at a critical moment right now. We're making hard choices. One option is to quit this way of life, get decent full time jobs and dramatically downsize the amount of land under our care. Or, we can stay put, spend less time smallholding and more time earning money. The choice is that simple, and that complicated.

For now, we've chosen to stay put, and to persevere. This means that we'll have to bear the cost to time spent actually in the garden growing things, and will require us to really prioritise what we do and don't want to grow. I'll probably spend less time and space on plants that my immediate family doesn't like to eat, and devote more time and space to the things we really love. There's no way we could give up entirely, knowing deep in the pit of our guts that smallholding is the most direct path to the good life. And the good life - purposeful life that is inwardly rich but outwardly poor - is absolutely, doggedly, worth striving for.

Any gardener worth their salt knows that the orderly landscape under their care is largely an illusion, and at certain points in the year, gardens teeter on the brink of chaos. All it takes is a spell out of the garden and, inevitably, your highly manicured replica of nature will tip over the edge, to begin the first stages in a return to wildness.

It starts with the lawn, which gets shaggy and seedy. Then come the weeds, usually the most noxious and invasive things possible. Then colonisers like wattles, which grow with Formula One speed and die nearly as fast. Then larger trees, followed by undergrowth, and eventually, a merry natural anarchy. It doesn't all happen overnight, of course, but after a month or so it's almost game over - illusion shattered.

There are two times in the year when I feel my garden teetering. The first is in spring, when warming weather spurs on a gallop of rampant growth exactly at the time when there's lots of pre-summer planting to get done. The second time is in late summer and early autumn. That'd be right about now.

It's no surprise really. In temperate climates March is a busy pre-winter planting period, which is fine in and of itself. The problem is, March is also the start of a phenomenon known as the "autumn flush". Some people scoff at the idea of a flush, but most gardeners will attest to the fact that many plants put on a spring-like surge of growth as summer starts to succumb to a lowering sun and cooling temperatures. Throw in some March rain to really power the growth, and what are you left with? A very thin line between order and chaos.

The solution to teetering is triage. This is a French word that means "to sort" or "to sift". You've probably heard it used in hospital emergency departments, where staff allocate treatment to patients according to the urgency of their need for care. The most life threatening injuries or illnesses are treated as a priority, with less life threatening conditions treated with reduced urgency. I once put my head through a glass window (by accident!) and spurted blood from a slash in the middle of my forehead. But because the injury wasn't life threatening I had to wait for an hour with a rag pressed against my head before doctors were able to stitch me up. It was fair enough. There were other patients in a worse state than I was.

A garden left to go wild is hardly a matter of life and death, but when you're trying to produce food with a semblance of order, chaos isn't the ideal outcome. Rather than become overwhelmed, here's what I do: I allocate care to plants and sections of the garden according to the urgency of their needs. Watering young and vulnerable plants during a dry spell often gets triaged above trimming the hedges, for example. Planting out seedlings and sowing seeds is more timely than mowing the lawn, so I do those jobs first. My garden isn't regularly open to the public and I don't rely directly on it to make an income, so neatness isn't my number one priority.

In fact, I think the whole concept of high maintenance gardening is a Calvinist, guilt inducing relic from an era that prized first impressions above all else. Bugger that. I'm more interested in authenticity and productivity than I am in keeping up appearances, so if my lawn gets a bit unruly and the weeds invade my gravel paths, sue me. I've got more important things to worry about, like putting food on my family table. When my garden teeters, I triage.

I've been following this week's tainted berry saga with great interest. For those of you who've been living under a rock, or better still, gone off the grid, a growing number of people in Australia have been infected with Hepatitis A as a consequence of eating a contaminated batch of frozen, mixed berries. Patties Foods, the company in question, imported the packed berries directly from northern China, where it is thought that poor hygiene standards caused the contamination.

My first reaction when hearing the news was, as it always is with cases like this, to think grow it yourself, or buy it from a small local farmer. In all honesty, berries are among the easiest plants to grow in a temperate climate garden, to the point that some varieties can become weedy. At Thistlebrook we grow blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries (as evidenced in the photo above). I spend maybe an hour or two on each plant per year, for a return worth hundreds of dollars. I never spray my plants with anything, such is their resistance to pests and diseases, and I only water during dry spells, most notably in spring when the plants are breaking dormancy and raring to put on a spurt of growth.

We also buy berries from Hampton Blue, a wonderful certified organic blueberry orchard just 1km up the hill from our place. These cost us about $12 a kilogram when we pick them ourselves (I think Sue gives us a discount for being good neighbours :-) ), a bargain when you consider the quality of the berries and simultaneously cheap enough for us to stock the freezer, but with enough of a margin for Hampton Blue to stay in business.

I'm pragmatic enough to understand that not everyone has access to a local berry orchard, and not everyone can (or will) grow berries in their garden. But this doesn't mean that I'd give a green light to anyone anywhere consuming frozen berries from China just because they can grab a box from the supermarket. To be really frank, my overarching view is that we should eat the foods that have their provenance in our individual corners of the world, and avoid those that don't. For me, berries grow wild along the creek, so it's natural that they will grow in gardens and farms. But that won't be the case in Darwin and Cairns. Those of you up north have access to foods that we can't grow down here, and you ought to consume your local delicacies with gusto.

In other words, we should all aim to eat as locally, and seasonally, as we possibly can. This doesn't mean you have to wear a culinary hair-shirt. We can all eat like kings and queens if we put in a modicum of effort growing our own and sourcing it locally.

Next, food labelling. You don't have to be Stephen Hawking to know that food labelling in this country is pathetic. Not only do we not know whether a certain product contains Genetically Modified Organisms or is sprayed with a cancer causing pesticide, we are subjected to this ridiculous concept of foods bearing the phrase "made from local and imported ingredients". These are nothing more than weasel words, championed by the food industry who argue that comprehensive labelling costs big money and the price of food will rise if it is implemented. Maybe it will, but I for one would like to know, for example, that when I buy a staple pantry product that I can't get locally, say flour, I can make my purchasing decision based not just on price, but where a particular ingredient was grown.

I would avoid Chinese grown ingredients altogether if labelling was enhanced. China is among the most toxic, polluted countries in the world and everything that leaves their shores, even products that are certified organic, leaves them potentially contaminated. Forget about free trade agreements. No amount of testing and no level of biosecurity can account for every food item that leaves China's ports. That one pavlova topped with frozen berries might be the one bite that gives you a nasty strain of E.Coli, and a short track to the grave. The risk of this happening in low, but the precautionary principle suggests that it would be wise to top my next pav with berries grown just up the road, if not those grown 10 metres from my backdoor.

Here's the bottom line: Industrialised agriculture always carries an increased food safety risk. Regardless of whether it comes from China or otherwise, food grown using corner-cutting techniques and toxic chemicals is unsustainable, and as we've seen with the contaminated berries, potentially dangerous. I'd never wish HepA on anyone, and sympathise with those who've been infected. But they ought to thank their lucky stars they didn't get something far, far worse.

Grow it yourself. Buy it local from people you know on a first name basis. Source ingredients from further afield with care.

Has anyone else seen the latest Lynx antiperspirant TV ad? A man "who doesn't sweat" is in his "natural habitat" eating sushi in a Japanese restaurant. An attractive female chef is shown flicking a flaming frypan when the man "eats a large piece of wasabi by accident". Does he lose his cool? No way. He releases not a drop of sweat thanks to an antiperspirant that keeps him dry and fresh for 48 hours (at this point, don't be afraid to snigger).

It's hard to know where to start with such blatant stupidity, but let's give the wasabi thing a go. Anyone who has cooked with, tasted, or grown wasabi, knows you don't just pick up a piece with your chopsticks and throw it down the hatch. For wasabi to release it's magical intensity of flavour a section of the plant's stem has to be very finely grated. This grating process combines different chemicals in the wasabi stem, and produces a reaction that lasts for approximately 15 minutes.

The other stupid thing in the ad is that eating wasabi doesn't make you sweat like eating a hot chilli does. The heat produced by wasabi is entirely different. When you eat a dollop of freshly grated wasabi paste (not the imitation, green dyed horseradish that masquerades as wasabi paste), the experience is almost erotic. The flavour starts out sweet and tender, but after a few seconds, a spicy intensity begins to build, then it escalates, before it roars up your nasal passages in a final, eye watering climax that quickly tapers off to a pleasantly sweet aftertaste. Like your first time in the sack with the partner of your dreams, it's an experience not quickly forgotten.

The Lynx people, or rather their marketing company, got wasabi completely wrong. I guess I shouldn't be too hard on them. It is one of the most misunderstood foods in the world, and the plant, well it's a cool climate treasure rarely grown beyond its native Japan. Lucky for me, I got to visit a couple of wasabi growers when I was in Tasmania last year (including one of the few commercial growers in Australia). I wrote about them, and in the process busted a few wasabi myths, for the current issue of Organic Gardener magazine. You can pick up a copy at most newsagents or your nearest ABC Shop. Until then, go here for a quick teaser: